Christine Hardie

National Standards, introduced into New Zealand schools in 2010, require teachers in years one to eight to make overall teacher judgments in mathematics. This new assessment policy asks teachers to use the standards and exemplars to make defensible and dependable holistic judgments about whether a student is above, at, below or well below their year standard. The centrality, complexity and nature of teacher judgment practice in mathematics in such a policy context need to be understood. My study drew from principals’ and teachers’ perspectives about how teachers approach and make overall teacher judgments in mathematics and was gathered using semi-structured interviews and from document analysis. Participants included four principals and seven teachers of students in years three to six. A range of approaches to judgment making emerged from exploring the beliefs, understandings and judgment practices teachers adopted. Teachers utilised both explicit and tacit knowledge in the decision making process and valued their relationship with and knowledge of their students, giving attention to features other than those specified in the mathematics standards. This round table forum will begin with a short presentation of findings to initiate discussion regarding influences that could be considered to ensure teacher judgments in mathematics are dependable and whether exemplars and standards are sufficient to inform professional judgments in mathematics.